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Cooperstown, N.Y., site of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, is a bucolic beauty
situated on a postcard lake surrounded by wooded hills; a place where dinosaurs once roamed.

And still do.

Look closely and you will find not only footprints but also fingerprints of these oversized
beasts known as the senior members of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America. These creatures
so completely guard Cooperstown, like a T-Rex protecting its prey, that nearby Doubleday Field
should be renamed Jurassic Park.

There is some merit in the parental approach these men and women take with their Hall of Fame
votes. They aim to keep the game as pure as possible, which means keeping steroid-suspicious
riffraff such as Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens out of the hallowed halls at Cooperstown, as
happened again this week when the voting was announced and Tom Glavine, Greg Maddux and Frank
Thomas made the grade, but Bonds and Clemens were among those left behind.

The only problem is when voters take themselves too seriously, which is a chronic problem
among baseball writers. I know, because I once was one.

Baseball scribes almost cannot be blamed for possessing an outlook that borders on arrogance.
They work in a parallel universe to the world in which most of us exist, their sense of reality
existing in oddball routine: arrive at ballpark 3½ hours before first pitch; gather in clubhouse
for pregame interviews; watch game; write like crazy to beat deadline. Then do it all again the
next day. For 162 games. Pro basketball and hockey writers cover 82 games, not counting playoffs.
Football writers only have 16. Slackers.

Baseball itself contributes to this sense of conceit, thinking itself the grand old game
blanketed by tradition and uncontrolled by time, unlike other sports that come under authority of a
clock.

So it is that Hall of Fame voters are steeped in sanctimony before they ever fill out their
ballots. Thus a pitcher such as Maddux, who dominated batters during an era of PED-enhanced
offense, does not appear on all 571 ballots. The rationale being that no player is that good.

Just as pompous, Jacque Jones and Armando Benitez each received one vote. Huh? Apparently, no
one is going to tell any voter who he can or cannot choose to elect, no matter how ridiculous the
idea.

From that standpoint, I must agree with Miami Herald columnist Dan Le Batard, who turned his
ballot over to Deadspin.com, which allowed readers to vote on how it should be cast. While not
approving of how Le Batard handled his displeasure with the voting process — his attempt at “
anarchy inside the cathedral of sports” smelled more like a publicity grab than sincere outrage — I
like that Le Batard basically told the voters, “You’re not so special.”

But Le Batard’s slap at the baseball establishment, and baseball’s overreaction to his stunt,
both miss what really is happening here. Baseball is breaking into two groups: the old and new,
with the old still interested in things like hall of fame voting and the new (i.e. younger) caring
little about accolades and honorary achievements.

The next set of baseball fans — smaller in number because the game moves too slowly for those
brought up in a world of instant everything — don’t get bent out of shape by all the Hall of Fame
bickering. If anything, they are amused by it, because for them the Hall of Fame has lost all
relevancy. Not coincidentally, attendance at the Baseball Hall of Fame has dropped dramatically in
recent years.

When every youth soccer player receives a trophy simply for participating, and trophies are
handed out like postgame candy, then things such as the Baseball Hall of Fame get cheapened, too.
Like it or not, young fans care more about the ESPYs than about Craig Biggio falling two votes
short of Hall of Fame entry.

That is why I say Hall of Fame voters are dinosaurs, not only because they see themselves as
greater than all others, but also because the times in which they live are drastically changing.
Today, the question is not “Who belongs in the Hall of Fame?” But “Who cares?”